December 20, 2011

I am filing the letters J, K, and L. Then I moved M.

Leaving the Antocha Station, Ben Lerner. Self-mocking literary autobiography. American poet in Spain on a fellowship to write a long poem about the Spanish civil war spends most of it stoned and thinking about women. I confess I could not stop reading it. Adding it to list of prose books about being/becoming a poet that includes Bolano's Savage Detectives Moxley's The Middle Room, DiPrima's Memoirs of a Beatnik.

Life of Crime: Documents in the San Francisco Poetry Wars Containing the Complex Life of Crime Scurrilous Newsletter of the Black Bart Poetry Society edited by Steve LaVoie and Pat Nolan that Scandalized the Literary World in the 1980s. Serious archival autobiography with no self-mocking. Still somewhat fascinating because suddenly I understood reasons why people do not talk that I had not understood before. Deep minutia about bay area poetics. There is a photograph of a youthful Lyn Hejinian and Carla Harryman, arms around each other.

An Old Junker: a Senior Represents, Howard Junker. Blog as autobiography. Opens with a story about a fight with Stephen Elliot and then Elliot throwing a beer on Junker. Has Junker-esque figure throwing gang signs on the cover and then Junker batting in a pumpkin costume on the back cover.